


Wherefore Art Thou Thor?

by yourlibrarian



Category: Fandom - Fandom, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Development, Fanfiction, Meta, Other, Popularity, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 08:24:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6697273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the eve of the latest Marvel installment, a look back at fandom's production.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wherefore Art Thou Thor?

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted September 9, 2015

I was intrigued by Joss Whedon's statement that Thor was the most difficult character to integrate in stories. This caught my attention because I wondered if a lot of fan writers felt the same. 

When I started wondering why I rarely see Thor written about in Avengers fandom, I assumed it had something to do with the stories I was reading. For one, none of them were explicitly about Thor as a central character. However a number of them were about the Avengers as a whole, or Loki and Tony, which one would assume would include Thor, simply because many Loki stories have to deal with him in some way.

As time went on, I did see some stories that included his POV or a chapter on him. But the more I read, the more I suspected the reason he wasn't written much was because of the character itself. I didn't have much interest in him myself when seeing the first Thor film -- self-centered, brawling jock types aren't usually fandom's cup of tea.

Unfortunately, searching AO3 by character tags doesn't say a whole lot, since many people tag for any character merely mentioned in a story (which is frustrating for many reasons). That's currently at 22,698 uses for Thor, which is actually more than Loki at 20,666. Yet Thor's numbers should be higher since he at least makes an appearance in a lot of Avengers stories, whereas Loki is less likely to unless he's a major character in the story.

By contrast, Cap is at 50,947, doubtless because he appears in so many Bucky/Steve stories, many of which might have no other Avengers characters appearing. Tony is at 45,952 of which many have been all those Steve/Tony stories.

What's interesting is that last year I did a similar character search on AO3, and most of the Avengers came in around 23,000 works each (a bit less for Loki), except for Tony Stark who had about 33,000 and Steve Rogers who had around 32,000. So stories about both of these characters have grown enormously, whereas there's very little change for either Thor OR Loki.

I'd gathered a while back that Steve/Tony was the leading pairing in the fandom though Steve/Bucky seems to have grown quickly. Bucky had been around 11,000 stories and is now at 23,384 (well past, say, Pepper or Maria or Jane Foster.)

However what's very interesting is that Bruce Banner had been the least written major character, since he clocked in around 16,500 stories. Yet he's now at 22,835, more than for Thor. To me this speaks to the importance of movie plots, which rocketed Bucky upwards as a major character, and which also seems to have helped Bruce, given his larger role in Ultron (and a canon ship, sort of). It also seems to have helped Natasha and Clint a good bit, since each of them are now at over 35-36,000 uses (fewer than 1000 appearances separate the two).

By contrast Ultron did little for Thor's development, and Loki's brief appearance in the film got cut. Joss mentioned that the changes demanded for Thor's dream sequence were re-edited so that less of it survived. I doubt, however, that the original scenes would have added much fodder for Thor stories. And given that Thor has had his own film since Avengers (2012), whereas Bruce and Clint have not (Natasha had a substantial role in Winter Soldier), one would have expected all that extra canon to keep his stories growing. Yet it seems they've barely budged. 

I'm curious about what others have seen in the growth (or decline) of certain kinds of stories in the Avengers movie verse, or the use of particular characters, whether in the last year or since the first Avengers film.


End file.
